


Scared Sheetless

by Ravenshell



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Ghost Hunters, Ghost Hunting, Ghosts, Graphic descriptions, Horror, Humor, Strong Language, ghost - Freeform, weird paranormal shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 15:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18236684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ravenshell/pseuds/Ravenshell
Summary: When Raph and Leo are challenged to go on a ghost hunt by their younger brothers, they end up encountering more than they bargained for.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A prize fic for Sorisu on deviantArt. They requested a non-romantic Leo and Raph horror adventure with some comedic twists. Split into two parts, just 'cause it got so darn long! Yes, I loved Ghost Hunters, but all the spinoffs and copycats are kind of crap for their faulty methods. No, I've never seen solid evidence of a ghost. No, I'm not sure if I believe in them or not, for some of the reasons Don lists in the story. ;p

Scared Sheetless

 

Don and Mike surveyed the damage with disappointment.

“You could have at least saved some for us…” the genius grumbled, resting his wrists on his hips, looking over the sparking heap of Foot-bots.

“Yeah!” Mikey echoed.  “We like beating up the baddies too, ya know.”

Leo at least had the decency to look a little contrite.  Raph just grinned smugly.  “Not our fault we’re just better at this.”

Leo jabbed his gloating sibling in the bridging with an elbow.  “Sorry, guys.  The A-minus team does a lot more of the behind the scenes stuff, though.  That’s just where your proficiency lies.”

“That’s just an excuse to hog the bad guys, Leo!  Leave some fun for the rest of us, wouldja?”

Raph slung a patronizing arm around his youngest sibling’s shell.  “Ahh, it’s all right, you guys.  We know you’re just as good as us.  Leo an’ me, we just jump in first because we’re that much braver than you guys!” 

“Raph,” the leader warned.

Don rolled his eyes.  “Oh, and here we go….”

Mikey shoved Raph’s arm off.  “You guys are always doing this!  Acting like you’re better, or braver, or whatever…”

“What, do you want proof?” the red-banded turtle scoffed.

His immediate younger brother grasped his chin in one hand thoughtfully.  “As a matter of fact, yes.  Why don’t you prove yourselves, once and for all?”

“Yeah!” Mikey affirmed, standing beside Don out of solidarity.  After a moment of hard glaring at their elder brothers, his eye shifted over to Donnie.  “How?”

Don focused on the other two.  “We’ll set a challenge for you two that you’ll have to complete to prove your bravery.”

“Seriously?” Leo deadpanned, quirking a brow at the younger pair. “You can’t just let this thing drop?”

“ _NO_ ,” they chorused.

“Give me a week to look some things up and get the proper gear together for you.”  Don rubbed his hands together.  “I’m getting ideas already!”

“Fine,” Raphael growled, rolling his eyes.  “You dorks go do your dork stuff.  C’mon, Leo… race you back to the Lair.  Last one there’s a rotten pizza gyoza!”

 

Don grinned, rubbing his hands together again.  Mikey’s mischievous gaze looked positively evil.  Neither boded well for the other two turtles.

“All right,” Leo said with a sigh, “what’ve you got for us?”

“You have to spend the niiight in a hauunnted hoooouuussse!” Michelangelo intoned in his spookiest ghost rendition.  “WooOOoooOOooyakasha!”

The elder pair stood unfazed.  Raph let his head fall to one shoulder as his eyes rolled upward out of boredom.  Leonardo raised a hand to his mouth to stifle a yawn.

Don’s look grew devious.  “Ohh, it’s better than that… We’re sending you ghost hunting!”

“I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts, Donnie,” Leo said quizzically.

“I never said that.  In fact, we’ve seen several… it would be hard to deny that they were actual ghosts.  More accurately, there is no _documented, verifiable_ proof of the existence of ghosts.”

Raph crossed his arms.  “What about all those ghost hunting shows Mikey likes watching?  Haven’t they turned up stuff?”

“All the time, dude!  Like voices that only show up on recordings, and stuff moving when no one is around!” Mikey chimed in with enthusiasm.  “This one time, they were investigating an old prison and—”

“Point being,” Leo stopped his chatterbox brother before he really got going, “they’ve already found evidence… Why send us?”

“Well, the fact is, these are shows on TV, for entertainment… Not exclusively for science.  That means they’re looking to keep their ratings up, even if they’re using somewhat legitimate methods.  We can’t guarantee they didn’t manipulate or falsify evidence for the camera.  So we’re sending you to gather some genuine, untainted evidence, at one of the most haunted places in the city… the Carleton Mansion!”  The brainy brother brought up a picture of a vast Victorian-style building on his monitor for them to view.

Though Don said it with a flair, Leo and Raph looked nonplussed. 

“Never heard of it.”

“Nope, doesn’t ring a bell.”

Don smirked.  “That doesn’t surprise me.  The Carleton mansion is roughly 110 years old, but was never seen until 2013.”

“Huh?” Raph scrunched his face at the conflicting statements.

“That doesn’t make sense…” Leo verified.

“That’s right.  Before May 10, 2013, it didn’t exist.  Neither did the Carletons.  Then suddenly, it had been there for 110 years, and the whole history of the family also appeared, integrated with events, as if they’d always been there.  Here, look at these two pictures, of the same site… one in 2011, one from two months ago.  You can see the buildings on the sides are the same, but it’s like they were pushed apart to make room.  And a vast number of people don’t recall it _not_ being there before, but some do.  It… wedged itself into reality, but imperfectly.”

“Weird.”

“Exactly.  According to some local paranormal groups and psychics, the house is a huge vortex of mystical energy and paranormal phenomenon.  A real hotspot!  It’s said that there’s hundreds upon hundreds of spirits present.  You’re practically guaranteed to catch something.”

Raph shrugged and nodded.  “Okay.  Sounds fun.”

Leo glanced beyond Don to the lab table full of equipment.  “You just did this so you could play with all the ghost-hunting gadgetry, didn’t you?”

The genius sniffed.  “Not _just_ so I could fool with the gadgetry,” he said smugly.  “Also to take your egos down a peg.”  Mikey let out a laugh and slapped hands with him.

Don then spent the next 45 minutes explaining the workings of thermal imaging cameras, SLS cameras, Hi-8 recorders, electromagnetic field detectors, FLIR imagers, and several other ghost hunting gadgets and methods for the A-team to use.

“Now, listen, guys… basic rules of the hunt: Number one, stay together.  We don’t now what kind of condition the inside of the building is in.  Number two, don’t take any unnecessary risks.  If at any point you’re in danger, come out immediately.  Mikey and I will be monitoring you from the Shellraiser.”

“Aw, man, you mean I have to sit in the van the whole time?!” the youngest protested.  “But that’ll be so _boring!_ ”

“Sorry, Mikey… A-minus team provides the backup as usual for this one,” Don overruled.

“Yeah, and the last thing we need is you trying to ‘ooga-booga’ us while we’re tryin’ ta find the real ghosts, dork,” Raph added, giving him a playful shove.

Mikey continued to grumble, muttering under his breath about ‘ _so_ bringing my GameGuy…’

“So when do we go, Don?” Leo asked, setting down the Go-Pro helmet he had been fiddling with.

Don spun his chair around to his computer and tapped a few buttons.  “Looks like tonight is ideal, actually.  There’s a storm moving in, but it’s supposed to deliver little to no rain.  The ionically-charged atmosphere supposedly provides more energy for ghosts to manifest.  We’ll drop you off at 10:30, and you can have the run of the place until, say, 3:00.”

“IF you make it that long!” Mikey taunted, earning another shove.

“Piece of cake,” Leo announced, and he and Raph exchanged a fist-bump.

 

Thunder rolled overhead, and the mansion loomed over them with its three high stories and cupola with a high metal spire on top, as they exited the Shellraiser.  It didn’t look like anyone had taken care of it in years, the paint peeled off and wooden gingerbread cracking in places, all the shrubbery in the garden grown wild or else dead. It might have even been spooky, if not for Mikey’s continual “WoooOooOoOoo!  WOOOOooOooOooo!!” and ghostly hand motions.

“Ugh, enough!” Raph groaned.  He would have gladly taken a swing at his annoying younger sibling had he not been loaded down with so much equipment.  “Don, do we really need to take all of this junk?”

“I’d prefer that you have as much chance of catching evidence of a ghost as possible.  Plus, between the two of you, you should be able to make it with all the gear in one trip.  We’ll be out here monitoring you… so give us a holler when you get too scared!” the genius teased, sending his brothers off.

“Oh, wait!” Mikey called, running up to them and tucking a small box into each of their belts.  “Extra emergency Double-A’s.  Battery drain is always an issue around ghosts.”

Leo grinned down at him, shifting his armload of gadgetry.  “Thanks, Mikey.  We’ll see you in a little bit.”

With that, the two elder turtle brothers marched up the porch steps.  Leo was about to grasp the doorknob, when the door swung open with a creak.  Both blinked at it for a moment.  “Well, there’s a good start…” Raph muttered.

Leo closed the door and put his weight on the board of the porch next to the door.  The latch popped, and the door swung open with the same ominous squeal.  “Just an old house.”

Raph nodded confidently, or what he hoped looked confident to his younger bros in the van.  “Yeah, ‘course.”

Once inside, with the door clicking home behind them, the two brothers turned on their flashlights to scan the room.  It wasn’t long before they turned their lights toward the floor, toward the edges of the moth-eaten area rug.

“There’s something under this…” he said, passing his light over the bare floorboards.  “Lettering of some sort?  ‘No, G, H, I…’ Looks like its been burned into the floorboards…”

“I’ve got some over here too,” Raph said, examining the left side of the rug.  “’Yes’, and more alphabet soup…”

“It almost looks like a giant Ouija board…”

Their phones both glitched at that moment, making both of them jump.  “Did you say the floor is a Ouija board?!” Mikey’s voice crackled through.

Raph rolled his eyes irritably, grabbing his own phone.  “Don, is the touch-to-talk setting really necessary here?”

After another beep and static, Don replied, “Sorry, Raph.  Necessary precaution.”

“Well, don’t be messin’ with us all night with these things!’

“Copy.  We’ll only contact you if it’s _really important…_ ” Done intoned, sounding like the comment was aimed at the youngest.

“It _is_ important!  Ouija boards are seriously bad juju.  Don’t play around on it, and don’t ask any questions there.  Get off of it and stay off as much as possible.  And just in case, hit the ‘Goodbye’ before you leave.”

“Right, thanks, Mikey.  Donnie, where should we start?”

“According ot the blueprints, there are three floors, a cellar, and an attic with a tower.  On the ground floor, off to your right is the kitchen and dining room. To the left are the parlor and library, and to the middle, beyond the stairs, is the ballroom.”

“Ballroom sounds fun,” Raph stated, and made to skirt around the stairs. 

“Why don’t we do the smaller rooms first, and then hit the ballroom before we head upstairs.?” Leo suggested instead, heading for the parlor.

“Do we _always_ have to do things _your_ way?!” the hot-tempered turtle snapped back.  “Can we for freakin’ _once_ do what I want?”

His cooler brother shrugged.  “I figure the smaller rooms probably won’t yield much or be too interesting.  Thought I’d leave the ballroom as something for you to look forward to.”

Raphael glared at him, then scrunched his brows in thought for a moment, and relented grumpily.  “Fine.  Let’s do the parlor, then.”  The two of them proceeded in, coughing at the shower of dust that came down as they shifted the door open.

Leo shuffled through his gear, setting the heavy pack, with its various antennae bouncing around, down in a dusty armchair to pull out the EVP recorder.  Raphael began a sweep with the EMF detector.  “This is Leo and Raph in the parlor, March 1, 10:35 p.m.  Raph’s taking a base reading with the electrcomagnetic field… thingie…”  A smack interrupted him, followed by another.  “Raph, stop hitting it!”

“It’s not workin’!” he defended.  “Look, the needle’s all the way in the red, and it’s not movin’ at all, and the digital’s just reading all 9’s!”  He grabbed his phone.  “Donnie, your elecro-magnetty thing’s not workin’!”  He beat the instrument against his palm again.

Another static glitch, and Don replied, “Raph, I tested everything before we left.  It’s working fine.  And what did I tell you about practicing percussive maintenance on my equipment?!”

The red-masked turtle snorted.  “This thing’s useless,” he said, pitching the device into another chair and leaning sullenly against a wall. 

“This is Leonardo and Raphael in the parlor, doing an EVP session… an Electro…What is it?” he asked his brother.

“Electronic… um.  Voice…”

“What’s the P stand for?”

“Paranor…mal?  -man?”

Leo started giggling under his breath.  “It’s not ‘Paranorman’…”

“You got any better ideas?!” Raph said and clamped his mouth shut, trying not to catch Leo’s giggles.  “Pizza?”

“Yeah, electronic voice pizza, that must be it!”  Leo snorted and bit his lip.  “…Recording session,” the leader decided, which made Raph break and let out a belly laugh before pulling himself together so Leo could continue.  “Is anyone here with us today?” Leo asked to the air after Raph had settled, He waited a few seconds before asking, “Are any members of the Carleton family here with us?”  After no apparent response, he added, “We know we may look a little odd to you… You don’t have to be afraid of us.”

Raph chortled.  “Yeah, ghosts are afraid of us!”

“Shush!” Leo commanded.  “Was this your home?” he continued.  “Did you, or someone you know pass away in this house?”

“C’mon,” Raph motioned.  “Nothin’s goin’ on in here.”

Leo gave an exasperated gasp.  “You’re not going to catch so much as a cold with that kind of impatience!”  Nevertheless, he shouldered the gear pack and they moved next door to the library.

“All the better… colds are the worst…”

Raph gingerly opened the door, so as not to receive another shower of dust.  Movement caught his eye as soon as he took a step in.  “Whoaa… Something moved over there.”

“Probably just a mouse.”

“It was like two feet high, though.  Like a shadow.”

Leo shrugged.  “Raccoon, then.”

“Wasn’t a raccoon!  We’d hear it movin’ around.  It looked like… legs.”

“Hello?  Is there anyone in here?” the blue-banded leader called.

After scouring the room with flashlights and finding no evidence of animals, and waving the door open and closed to see if they could reproduce what Raph had seen, they moved on to the dining room, where it looked like the elaborate cast-iron chandelier had broken free from its mounting, breaking what had been an elegant long table, its matching chairs tossed around everywhere.  Leo paused at hearing what he thought was a whisper, but they eventually gave up and went on to the kitchen, where they set up the green laser grid and the SLS camera.  “What was this one supposed to do?” Raphael asked, sitting on a counter.

“If there are any spirits present, it’s supposed to pick up on their energy and project a matchbox figure on the screen.”

“Cool.  My turn?”

“Be my guest.”

“Raph and Leo in the kitchen, 11:23 p.m.  Are there any ghosts in here with us?”

“You’re not supposed to ask it like that!”

“Why the hell not?!”

“Didn’t you listen to anything Donnie said?”

“I don’t listen to a lot Don says.  It’s boring.”

“Don’t ask if they’re ghosts!  Sometimes they might not know, and it’ll freak them out!”

“Oh,” Raph said, eyes wide.  “Uh, sorry about that.  Is anyone here with us?  Would you like to come and join us?”

Leo, looking at the SLS’s screen, grinned.  “Hey, we’ve got one.  No, two… three, four… Wait, that can’t be right…” 

“What?”  Raph hopped down to join him, watching more and more stick figures popping onto the screen, overlapping one another to the point where the whole screen was white with them.

The leader grabbed his phone.  “Donnie, the SLS is going nuts on us too… Are you sure it was working when we left?”  After a moment of getting no response, he tried again.  “Donnie, come back?”  Once more, nothing.

Raph tapped his arm.  “They’re just trying to scare us into coming out early and losing.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.  Ballroom?”

“Ballroom!”  Raph rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

Each of them grabbed a handle of the big double doors leading to the grand room and pulled.  Immediately, something white and bony came swooping down at them, earning shouts and a flurry of weapons.  Half of a plastic skeleton, cut in half with a diagonal slash, fell to the floor at their feet.  The remaining half hung from a rope, one sai piercing its chest and the other stuck through a plastic eye socket.

Both breathed an awkward laugh.  “Good reaction, ninja,” Leo said sarcastically.

“Says the guy who just cut Mr. Bone-jangles in half here…” Raph snarked back, retrieving his sai.  “I swear, when we get back, I’m gonna pound Mikey until he leaks out of his shell in a puddle…”

“I don’t think it was him.  Skelly-bones here has a layer of dust on him.  Not as much as the rest of this place, but still… Even the fake cotton cobwebs have real cobwebs on them,” Leo observed, to Raph’s face-making.  “Looks like someone was having a Halloween party in here, and a lot more recently than 1903.”

“What do we do in here?”

Leo pointed to chairs set up on opposite sides of the room.  “Let’s just sit for a while, and see what kind of feel we get in here.”

Raph nodded and strode off to plunk himself down in a high-backed chair on the other side of the high-ceilinged open space.

For a while, they simply sat.

Raph watched Leo snap him head around, relax for a moment, then repeat the motion, looking confused.  “What is it, Fearless?”

“I… keep hearing voices behind me.”

“What, like whispering?”

“No… clear voices.  At least two men and a woman… Maybe somebody’s walking by outside?”

Raph reached for his cell to try Donnie again, with again, no answering signal.

For a few more minutes, they sat in silence.  Raph stared at the door they’d come in, turned, comparing it to the one on the opposite side of the room, then looked back, scrunching his face up in deep thought.

“You hear something too?” Leo queried. 

“Nah,” Raph said distractedly.  “Just tryin’ ta figure something out.”

“What?”

“The skeleton.  It didn’t just drop straight down, right?  It came swinging _at_ us, like this…”  He made an arc in the air with one hand.

“Yeah?  So?”

“So where’d it swing _from_?”

Leo peered at the door, and the frame above it.  Raph was right… Despite the angle the toy had swung at them, nothing was there for it to have fallen from… like it came out of mid-air…  He shook his head, baffled.

“Wanna head upstairs?”

Raph shrugged.  “May as well.”

The two ascended the sweeping staircase, finding themselves on a small landing with what appeared to be two decent-sized rooms to either side along the gallery, followed by a larger one on each end, arced in a near semicircle, and a small one directly in the middle—likely a bathroom.  Leo unshouldered the tech-pack, leaning it against the balcony next to Raph’s as his brother went wandering down the west wing, scanning the area with his flashlight. 

“I’m gonna set up the FLIR to look down the staircase, to see if we can catch anything moving up or down it,” Leo said, eyes on the tripod he was setting up.  “Don’t go too far.  Remember, Donnie said not to get sep—”  He glanced up to see the hothead an impossible distance away down the suddenly extremely long gallery with more doors than there should have been.  “Raph!” he shouted, trying to get his brother’s attention. 

Though he walked rapidly, he never seemed to get any closer.  Fearing that Raphael might indeed get out of reach or that something worse might happen, Leo increased his pace, after a moment breaking into a jog, and then an full-bore run down the hallway.  He glanced over the balcony to mark his progress, only to see the Ouija-marked entryway still below.

Utterly confused, he looked back, expecting to see the miles-long hallway and _not_ expecting to see his brother directly in front of him.  With a yelp, he waved his arms, backpedaling in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the inevitable crash which sent the two of them rolling.

“Get offa me, Fearless!  What the hell are you doin’?!”  Raph shoved him roughly and got back to his feet.

“I… But… That…” he stammered.  “Something really weird just happened…”

“Uh-huh.  Creepy ghost shit.  I get it, already.  You don’t have to start tryna wig me out too.”

Leo huffed in confused exasperation at his rough brother’s brush-off.  _He_ knew something weird had happened with the hallway, but getting his brother to believe him—futile effort.  He scowled and wondered offhand if this was how everyone who had reportedly seen a ghost—or mutant, for that matter— felt… ignored or mocked by people who thought they ‘knew better.’  He let it lie for now and caught up to where Raph stood.

“Let’s see…” Raphael said, pointing to doors at random.  “Eeny, meenie, miney… moe!”  Selecting the door in the middle, he strode forward and opened it, motioning Leo in.  “Age before beauty,” he added with a smirk as his brother walked past, but it didn’t save him from getting a smack on the arm.

The room seemed to be set up as a breakfast or tea room, with four high-backed chairs and a small table in its center.  A cobweb-laden tea set sat in its middle as if still expecting its owners to utilize it again at any moment.  “So, what’re we usin’ in here?”

Leo leaned forward, setting a small box on the table.  Thunder rolled as the storm outside approached, neither turtle fazed.  “Spirit box.”

“What’s that do?”

“You seriously didn’t listen to a word Donnie said, did you?”

“You know how he can’t stick to the point.  Blah, blah, megahertz; blah, blah, science…”

“That’s rude,” Leo chided.  “Accurate, but rude.”  He turned on the box, which started making radio static.  “The spirit box is supposed to make background noise for entities to use as energy to speak.  When they do, words will pop up on this screen.”  Leo pointed to a corresponding device.  “Leo and Raph, 12:13, upstairs breakfast nook.  Is anyone here with us?” 

Something clattered against the window behind them.  Raph screwed up his forehead, pointing toward the source of the noise, then directing a flashlight that way.  He stooped and picked up a teaspoon, matching the set on the table.

“Somebody in here throwin’ things?” he demanded.  With a low grumble, he threw himself into one of the chairs.

Leo looked to Raph, and his eyes brightened, as they did whenever he had an idea.  “Start mocking them.”

Raph drew his head back skeptically, though he also looked like he liked the prospect.  “What, really?”

Leo nodded.  “Mikey said sometimes you’ll get more of a response if you stir them up a little.  Go ahead, piss them off.  It’s right up your alley!”

“You’re damned right it is!” the hothead chuckled, cracking his knuckles before launching into his tirade.  “Hey!  Who’s out there?  If you’re tryin’ ta hurt us, you better throw somethin’ better than a piffly little teaspoon!  What, is that all you got?!  You got anything to say ta us, assholes?  Bet you can’t say it into that little box on the table, can ya?  You tryin’ ta get us to leave? ‘cause we’re not goin’ anywhere!  Come and tell us what you think of us, you cowards!”

SPOON, said the robotronic voice of the spirit box, followed a moment later by, THROW.

“Are you the one that threw that spoon?” Leo asked.  Lightning flashed outside the window, a loud boom following directly after.

COUGH, said the box, followed by, BLOOD, and then, GUILT.  Then the words began picking up speed…

FOREMAN AXE BURIED HURT RANSOM CELLAR KNIFE DEAD TURTLE KILL PERSON

GET GHOST FOREST OUT

COFFIN EAST MAN SICK TOWER EVIL DEATH MURDERED STONE TURTLE CARLETON

RUN SWORD PAIN AWAY  


The two flinched as the words came in a flurry, faster and faster, the list scrolling off the screen almost before the words could be read, the robotic voice running words together and over each other, it was processing them so fast.

Leo reached out and clicked the switch off with a sigh.  “This thing’s not working either… Maybe it’s the lightning…”

Raph gave him a wide-eyed look.  “You sure?  What if it is working?  What if it’s all been working this whole time?”

Though the leader in blue seemed a little twitchy, he waved a hand.  “Nah.  It’s just glitching.”

His brother eyed him.  “It said ‘turtle’ more than once.”

“Donnie probably programmed it to do that so we’d get creeped out.  C’mon, let’s get ou—”

The tea tray chose that moment to slide off the table, its contents shattering on the hardwood.

The two turtles, already edgy and geared up into fight-or-flight mode, scurried out into the hall at the sudden noise, abandoning the spirit box behind them.

“WHAT THE FUCK—”

“Sorry, that might’ve been me… I caught the edge of the table with my shell as I got up.”

Raph’s voice rose with barely-controlled rage.  “Then why the hell’d you run?!”

“I ran because you ran!”

The hothead rolled his eyes.  “Jesus, Leo!  HEY, GHOSTS!  Leo broke your tea set! That was all him!”

“Oh, thanks… throw me under the bus on that one…”

“Whatever, _Fearless_ ,” Raph dripped sarcasm on the nickname.  “Let’s investigate a bathroom already.”

Leo tsked.  “Didn’t you go before we left?”

“Yeah, but I also drank up the rest of the soda before we left, and now it’s catchin’ up to me.”

“What, all of it?  There was like half a bottle still in the fridge.”

“Yep, the whole thing.”

“Why?!”

“’cause Mikey wanted some.”

Leo’s flat look said that _that_ explained everything.  “You are a real asshole sometimes…”

Raph shot his brother a shit-eating grin, turning the knob.

It was indeed a bathroom, judging by the prominent claw-footed tub, which something large splashed in as the door swung open. 

Raph’s grin dwindled to nothing, his eyes going wide.

“Probably just a large rat,” Leo encouraged.  “Go on…”

“A… a rat.  Sure,” the other turtle echoed.  That was completely reasonable and assuring.  But he couldn’t force his feet to move, and was glad he didn’t as something black began oozing out over the side of the tub.  With another splash, a blue, mold-covered hand appeared over the rim, and a woman’s body, missing the head, sat up in it as the black ooze—wet, black hair—began slinking over every surface and dripping down from the doorframe, causing Raph to take a hasty step back.  The hair around the door seemed to clot into an unwinding mass… no, a _head_ , with dead, white eyes and pale flesh, which, as soon as it faced them, opened its mouth and shrieked at a deafening volume.

Acting on pure reaction, Leo drew one of his katana and swatted the head across the bathroom.  He seized the knob and slammed the door shut before the head, spinning like a line drive to left field, even landed with a sploosh in the tub.  Seconds later, what sounded like its body collided with the door, collapsing behind it.  After a couple of scratching noises, all went silent.

“What the fuck was that?!” Raph squeaked, an octave higher than normal and breathing hard.

“Maybe let’s find a restroom that’s a little less… occupado…” Leo said, jamming the knob with the frame of a lovely seascape.

“I don’t have to go anymore,” Raph stated meekly.  “Also, you might want to stay to the right as you go past here…”

Leo made a face in response, but hastened toward his pack.  “Should we cut our losses?  Eat some humble pie and let Don and Mikey win this one?”

Raph gave a nod.  “I can live with that.  Probably.”

“Me too.  Grab the FLIR, and—”

)))KRAKABOOM!((( A shaft of lightning speared straight downward, striking the spire of the Carleton Mansion tower.  The simultaneous thunder exploded, violently shaking everything in the area. 

For some of the ancient, dry and rotting century-old wood of the cupola, that was the last straw.

It too, gave up the ghost.

 

Crick…crickcrackcrackle…

 

Leo paused.  “Did you hear…”

…crackitycrackpopgrooo…

“What is it?  Another ghost?” Raph said, glancing around warily.

“No, it sounds like it’s coming from—” He looked up...

…oooaaannnSNAP! SHATTER!!

 

)))CRASH!!(((

 

…just in time to see the high ceiling break open and tons of brick and timber to come falling at them. 

“MOVE!” he yelled, and the two turtles leapt to the sides, the falling debris taking out the floor they had been standing on and most of the grand staircase, breaking through the floor and into the cellar level below it.  A massive cloud of dust flew up in its wake.

 

)))!!!CRASH!!!((( )))))!!!!!BLAM!!!!!(((((( The pattering of rain was no consolation for the lack of entertainment, as far as Michelangelo was concerned.  The battery on his GameGuy had not held up nearly long enough and now he regretted bringing spare batteries for Raph and Leo, but none for himself.

“Donnie… I’m soooo bored, brah…  How come none of the monitors or anything is working?  I thought we were s’posed to be able to watch Raph and Leo the whole time they’re in there!”

Don huffed, not for the first time that evening.  “I don’t know, Mikey.  It appears to be in perfect working order, but for some reason, I just can’t get a signal… not from any of the cameras or the T-phones…”

The youngest yanked his phone from his belt and clicked a button.  “I still got four bars…”

“So it’s not that they’re out of range… It’s possible that because of the storm, there’s a lot of electrical interfer—”

A concussive blast of thunder rocked through them.

“Holy chalupa!  Did you see that?!”  Mikey threw open the side door.  “It just hit the tower!”

Don continued fiddling with the wiring on one of the relay devices.  “No, Mikey, I did not see that.  Stay in the van, or it could hit you too.”

Michelangelo shoved the subway car doors open, staring up through the rain at the tower.  It started leaning.  There was a joke in there about pizza, if only he could work it in somehow…

No.  Now it was leaning way too much.  It shouldn’t be doing that.  “Donnie…” he said, trying to attract the genius’s attention.

“I’m busy, Mikey,” a voice tinged with irritation wafted back to him.

“Donnie!” he shouted, much more urgently.  A moment later, the whole cupola collapsed through the roof, taking the attic level with it.  THAT got Donnie’s attention.  He appeared at the doors beside Mikey.

“What was that?!”

“The whole tower just went down!”

Don didn’t hesitate, grabbing his bo.  “We’ve gotta get them out of there!”  The two of them dashed up to the door.  The genius grabbed the handle, twisted it, jiggled it, yanked and shoved and torqued, but the door refused to so much as budge.  “That makes no sense!  It just popped open for Leo and Raph!  Not like it could have swelled _that_ much with the rain already…”

“Since when do ninjas need doors?” Mikey announced, swaggering toward a window.  He began working one of his lockpicking tools under the sill to flip the inside lock open, but couldn’t seem to be able to push it far enough in.  He felt like he was being watched and looked up into a hideously shrunken face with one eye dangling from the socket and the other empty.  “WHOA!”  He leapt back from the window, but the face was gone.  So was his lockpick, for that matter.  Maybe it fell on the grass… but he wasn’t sure if it was worth facing the face again to retrieve it.

Donnie, meanwhile was employing the blade of his naginata in an attempt to prise the door open.  “No good… Did you get the window…?”  Don could read on Mikey’s face that he hadn’t.  He sighed.  Much though he disliked harming a historic building… “Break it.”

Mikey hesitated.  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea…”

“It wouldn’t be my first choice either, but we have got to get in there and make sure our brothers are okay!”

“No… Don, I mean…”

But his brother was clearly not in a listening mood, immediately thrusting his bo at one of the small windows in the grid of twelve before him.  The aged glass stayed surprisingly resilient and sent the impact shock of Don’s own hit back up his arm.  After shaking his arm out a couple of times, the scientific-minded turtle bent in close to examine the glass that thwarted him.  Seconds later a pale hand slammed against the pane, causing Don to take a few startled steps back.  The hand slid down slowly, nails screeching against the glass.

“I don’t think they want us in there,” Mikey stated.

“No kidding,” Don acknowledged flatly, approaching the window once more, despite the fiendish faces that appeared on the other side when he did.  He pressed a cautious finger to the glass, rapped on it, then gave it a solid punch, while the spirits on the other side wailed and clawed and beat themselves against the window, their features changing like mist.  “It’s almost as if there’s some sort of forcefield around it… maybe around the whole house!”

“Well, we’ve got one sure way in,” Mikey said, pointing to the roof and pulling out his kusarigama chain.

Donatello reached out a hand to stay him.  “No.  Even if the forcefield doesn’t cover the hole, the tower falling in may have compromised the structural integrity of the rest of the roof.  We’d have no guarantee that it would hold up under our weight, and then we’d risk more of the ceiling—AND us—falling down on Leo and Raph!”

One of the misty faces in the window nodded emphatically before disappearing, though they weren’t looking its direction.

“So, what, we just leave them in there?”

“I’m afraid so,” Don sighed.  “All we can do is wait, and try to get a signal to go through.”  He put his arm around his little brother, guiding him back to the van, but he paused.

“What is it?”

“Do you hear that?”

Mikey strained, trying to hear anything but the patter of rain and the usual night noise of the city.  “No?” he ventured.

“No sirens.  You would think, with lightning hitting the mansion, and then the tower falling in, someone would have noticed and called it in… but, nothing… Or at least nothing heading our way.”

“Weird.  But I’ll take it… Last thing we need is to not be able to get to Raph and Leo _and_ having to dodge the po-po!”

They sat back in the van, Mikey watching the rain patter off the mansion once more, now not just bored, but anxious for his MIA bros, as Donnie began fiddling with more wiring.  He tapped his toes on the floor, but that only helped for so long.  He eyed Donnie’s progress with the wires and a screen that was supposed to be connecting to Leo’s Go-Pro.  “Can I help?”

Don let out a short sigh, then looked at his onboard toolkit.  “You know what, yes.”  He reached into the foam-lined box and pulled out a socket wrench.  “Hold this, please.”  After a few uninterrupted moments, when he could sense Mike had lost patience playing with the ratchet, he asked for it back, and Mikey was thrilled to ‘help’ as he was then asked to hold an 8mm spanner instead.

It was an easy enough tactic to keep his attention-deficit brother distracted.  Mikey never noticed or said anything about Don not actually using the tools he handed back and forth.  Don just had to remember to give him something new every few minutes, so he could continue working.  And worrying.  Because someone had to, but Don could at least make sure it wasn’t Mikey.  And there was plenty of it to do, because Don had no idea how to go up against ghosts or ghost forcefields… modern science didn’t have much to say about that.  Raph and Leo were on their own.  What had he gotten them into?


	2. Chapter 2

The two turtles coughed as the dust from the collapsed tower swirled around them.  Leo’s flashlight beam pierced the darkness, but mostly caught particles in the air rather than lighting the area.  “Raph!  You all right?”

After another brief coughing fit, his brother answered from across the gaping hole in the landing.  “Yeah.  Fine.  You?”  His beam of light joined his brother’s.

“Good.  Can you see a way across this?”

Both lights focused on the pit and its edges, an easy forty feet apart.  This was no rooftop-to-rooftop jump, with limited visibility and unstable landing ground to boot.

“Nope… So much for not getting separated,” Raph called back.  “How far down, you think?”

Leo’s beam landed on the FLIR camera on its tottery tripod, right on the edge of the gap, just as it lost the fight with gravity.  He tried to keep his light on it as it went over and plummeted down into the gloom.  After several seconds, a shattering crash carried up to them from below.

“Oh,” Raph said casually. “’Bout that far.”

“Do you have your grappling hook?” Leo yelled across the breach.

An irritated snort was the start of his answer.  “No!  Donnie was loading me down with all this ghost gear, and I didn’t think I’d need it _inside_ a building, Mister Perfection!”

Leo sighed and shook his head.  “Damn.  I didn’t bring mine either.”

“What?  Splinter Junior forgot some of his gear??”

“Not ‘forgot’… I left mine home for the same reasons you did.”  He shone his light up to the balcony above him, ignoring the shadows that moved out of its way.  “Looks like the third floor is set back a little further, and the balcony and rooms there are mostly intact.  If one of us can find a way up there, we can make our way across to the other.  Check in the rooms on that side, see if you can find any way up.”

“Right,” Raph said, sounding unsure.  “Leo… What about the ghosts?”

“Just tell them you don’t believe in them.”

The red-banded turtle let out a less-than-confident half-laugh.  “Great…”

 

Leo was just as loath to leave his brother, but he knew that just staring at each other across the gap wasn’t going to get them anywhere, so he headed for the large room at the end of the hall on his side.  The parted curtains let in some weak light from outside, and, as he got further into the room, he was surprised to see the outline of a person standing near the corner, facing away from him.  She looked much more solid than a ghost, he thought, but then, so had the thing in the bathroom.  But her clothes were modern, jeans and a cap-sleeved blouse, with a spread of short, wavy blonde hair around her head.  She held an electromagnetic field detector in her hand, similar to their own but with an extra antenna, its lights flickering slightly.

“Oh, hello,” he greeted.  “Are you ghost-hunting here too?”

“Yegh,” she said, and he wondered if she had a speech impediment.  She began turning to face him, awkward and slowly.

He cast his light a bit to the side, so he wouldn’t blind her with it, but enough to see her.  “I know I may not look normal, but you don’t need to be af—”

He froze.  She didn’t have a nose, just a wide open sinus cavity.  Her lips and part of her jaw and chin were gone.  Something was wrong about her eyes—they lacked the roundness and shine of a whole eye, like olives that had been sliced in half.  Above them, the frontal part of her brain was exposed.  The overall impression was that something had sheared her face off.

“Ge’ ou’!” she said with a desperate tone, and Leo could see the back half of her tongue working in what remained of her mouth.  “Oo ha’’a ge’ ou’!  Huwwy!”

Before Leo could summon up the courage to respond, her skin and clothing fell away like dried pieces of parchment, leaving bare musculatstructure, which then also fell off the bone in chunks, and the bones themselves dropped to the floor in a pile a dust, all of which disappeared completely the instant her skull hit the lavish carpet below.  Her EMF flickered a few times, then went dead, but remained where it was on the floor.  Motion caught his eye: a ceiling-to-floor curtain, flapping in the breeze of a window, a rust-stained smear down the middle of a broken pane of glass wedged in the frame at an angle.

He stood aghast for a long moment, brain trying to register what had just happened, but she wasn’t wrong… they had to get out, and the sooner, the better.

Clearly, the windows were a poor option unless you wanted a little off the top, or getting along with half a face.  He glanced around for any way out, anything he could use…  The room contained a dresser, a vanity with a bowl and pitcher on it, a chaise lounge, a large canopy bed with bedside tables… Leo paused, eyes focusing on the pewter candelabra atop one of the bedside chests.  He seized it, and started bending the arms down as best as he could. “Sorry, ghosts… Hope you don’t mind me borrowing this…”

After that, he drew his katana and made several slashes through one of the curtains.  Taking some precious time to carefully knot and braid the strips, he ended up with a decent length of curtain rope, which he knotted over the candelabra’s base for a reasonable facsimile of a grapnel.  He gave it a little test swing before moving out into the hall and hooking it over the upper balcony. 

“Guess it’s time for me to _move up_ in the world, ey?” he quipped to no one in particular.

“Boo,” said a ghost next to him.

Leo blinked for a moment, then started climbing regardless.  “Crummy ghosts, think they’re so funny…” he muttered.

 

The pair of shadow legs was back as Raph traversed the hall, but always darted through the wall the moment he tried to catch sight of it.  “Quit followin’ me!” he snapped at it, though that didn’t seem to deter it.

He figured if there was anything to find, it would be in the large room at the end, so that was his destination. 

Upon examination, the large, windowless room appeared to be a secondary library and office space, with a large, heavy, hardwood desk near one of the bookcases and a couple of chairs set out of the way.  Raph stepped in and searched all the way to the back, in case there was a door linking to perhaps a more intact hall or stairway out.  His search was interrupted by the door slamming hard behind him.  He spun and trained his light on it, but there was nothing to see.  Deciding there was nothing worthwhile here anyway, he started tromping back over to exit, but his flashlight dimmed and flickered, then went out completely.

“Aw, are you kidding me?!”  He shook the flashlight and pounded on it a few times, to no avail.  What was it that Mikey had been going on about with battery drain?  With a growl, he felt his way to the door, and grasped the handle.  It didn’t budge, so the irritated turtle twisted and shook the handle and pounded and rammed his shoulder against the stubborn door, but it didn’t budge.  By the time he gave up fighting with it, he was breathing hard… not from the effort, but from the steadily encroaching thoughts of being locked in the dark with things that that possibly wished to harm him.

He reached for the spare box of batteries Mikey had slipped into his belt, dumping the dead double-A’s on the floor, and fiddled with the spares, trying to figure out which direction they were supposed to go while in pitch blackness. 

Something behind him thunked to the floor. 

“Leo?”  Maybe his brother had found a way in, though if he had, he’d given no indication of his presence, and it wasn’t like the leader to joke around the way Mikey would.  God, he wished it was Leo…

Near his ear-slit, a high-pitched voice, like a child’s, whispered, “He’s not here.”

He had his sai in his hands in an instant, swiping and stabbing at empty air.  “Who’s in here?!” he demanded, getting a creepy giggle in response from another corner of the room.  Thoroughly on edge, he dropped to the area rug, feeling for the batteries he’d flung away in favor of his weapons.  He jammed batteries pell-mell into the slots, trying one combination and then the next, unable to tell the dead ones from the new ones at this point, and just hoping against hope for the light to work.

He clicked the button.

An exclamation of joy left him as the light went on, pointed at the ceiling.  In relief, he brought the beam down toward the door.  For a second, it passed across a horribly shrunken white face, skin pulled tight against the bone, black circles lining sunken eyes under wisps of dark hair, and Raph let out a cry of terror as he shone the light around everywhere, trying to locate it again, but to no avail.  Moments later, the door swung open.

“Raph?”

The hothead’s face lit up.  “LEO!”  He threw himself out of the black room at his brother.  “Am I glad to see you!”  He cleared his throat and stopped clinging to the leader’s shell, reining himself in.  “Not that I was scared, ‘r anything…”

“Of course not.  Don’t want to tarnish your tough guy image,” Leonardo smirked.

“Shut up…”

“C’mon,” he said, by way of dropping the subject.  “I think I found a way down.”  Raph scrunched an eye in curiosity as his brother climbed a very ugly rope. attached to a candlestick hooked around the upper balcony.  It seemed counterintuitive to be going up to get down, but Fearless had never steered them wrong, so he ran with it.

Buuuut he had to question his brother again as Leonardo seemed to lead them to a closet.  He swung the door open, making a _ta-da!_ motion at the box inside with two ropes running through it.  It endured Raph’s scathing glare for a time.

“I give up.  What is it?”

“Dumbwaiter.”

“Jackass.”

Leo rolled his eyes.  “It wasn’t an insult… It’s called a dumbwaiter.  It’s like an old-timey elevator.  Servants would use them to move items from floor to floor without having to take the stairs.  One servant on the ground floor could send items in it to someone else up at the top.”

“Huh,” said Raph.  “You’re still a jackass, though.”

The blue-banded turtle sighed heavily.  “Of course.”  He held on to the ropes and shimmied his way inside.  “I already checked, and it’s still in working order… goes all the way down.  It’s a tight fit with our shells, not really made for people… and we’ll have to go one at a time, but unless I miss my guess, this probably lets out in back of the ballroom.”

“Then it’s a straight-shot out.  Unless the door’s blocked, or the ceiling caved in.”

“Not gonna know unless we try,” the eldest decreed, and began descending.  “I’ll send it back as soon as I’m down.”

“Right.  I’ll just…”  He shone his light around, only catching the motion of those disembodied shadow legs wandering around after him again.  “Stop it!” he snarled, and they zipped away at an inhuman pace.

 

Raphael unfolded himself from the dumbwaiter at the ground floor, in what appeared to be an extensive linen closet, and stood next to his brother, who probably should have been looking more smug about his transportation solution.  He paused, listening.  “Music?”

“Could just be residual… just some piece of the past that repeats itself,” Leo assured in a whisper, but the ghostly strains of an echoey Chopin waltz nevertheless sent shivers up both of their shells.

Leo slowly, and as silently as he could, pulled the double doors open just a crack, and they both peered through.  The music ceased and near on two hundred eye sockets, some still occupied, some empty, all turned their way.  Unlike Leonardo’s friend from upstairs, these wraiths were decked in long Victorian dresses and suits with tailcoats and ruffled cravats… Some of the spirits seemed like fully-intact people, others sported tears in their clothing which showed patches of rotting flesh or empty ribcage.  Some were nothing more than skeletons with clothing draped over them. Leo shoved the doors shut again, and just stood there for a moment in shock.  An instant later, the shock turned to strategizing.  The turtle rested one arm on the other, a hand gripping his chin.  Raph recognized it as a mannerism his brother had picked up from Splinter.  If mutant turtles had hair, he was sure Leo would have his groomed into a long, thin beard like their father’s, and he would be stroking it as he contemplated their course of action.

“What’s the plan, Fearless?  Do we head back up, find some other way down?”

The leader’s eyes passed over the tidy stacks of folded napkins, doilies, placemats, tablecloths, and…

“No,” he said with a grin, pulling a sheet from a shelf and unfolding it as he drew one katana.  “When in Rome…”

 

When the door opened again, it was to two “ghosts” joining the rest, though not dressed as elegantly as the other guests.  The two white-sheeted Halloween spooks bowed to each other.  One hissed at the other, “You were supposed to curtsey!”, and the other replied, “I told you, I ain’t doin’ that!”  Despite their bickering, they then joined “hands” and began dancing through the rest of the crowd as the music went on, and received a much warmer reception.

A lady spirit, upon seeing them, began giggling, bringing a hand up to cover her mouth.  A skeleton in a waistcoat let its jaw drop wide as it guffawed at them.  Another woman began wildly tittering at them, and spread out a feathered fan to cover her mouth and, thankfully, the missing part of her cheek.

“They’re laughing at us,” Raph ground out through his teeth.

“Would you rather have them laughing at us or lunging at us?” Leo countered.  “Just keep up the Turtle Trot until we get to the other side!”

Their ghost pretense seemed to hold up fairly well, despite Leo’s low complaint of, “Ow!  That was my foot, Raph!”

“Sorry!  Not like I can see where I’m putting my feet in this thing!”

“You’re a ninja!  You shouldn’t have to see your feet to know where they are!”

“It’s not like I can see yours either, you know!  You couldda made these eye-holes bigger!”

“Shhhh!”

They had taken a spinning path around the dance floor, merging with the movements of the other dancers, past the bony band, finally nearing the double doors they’d originally come in through earlier in the evening.  The halved plastic skeleton was a sight for sore eyes, but it took that second of inattention for a misplaced foot to pull a sheet wrong, and suddenly Raph was fully exposed.  Shrieks and shouts of dismay went up from the crowd, and the skeletal cellist’s bow struck a sour note and screeched off the strings, but Leo threw off his sheet and the two turtles dove for the door.  It only took two shoves to force it open enough for them to squeeze their shells through.

They skirted the debris from the collapsed tower and staircase, sprinting into the Ouija board entry, though the spirits from the ball didn’t seem to be in pursuit.  Both seemed to agree without a word spoken that the sooner they got out the front door, the better.  Nevertheless, something caught Leo’s eye over his shoulder, and his step faltered.  Raph bumped into him, the impact spinning him 180 degrees around, so that he spotted what Leo was seeing too. 

“Holy shell… what the hell is that?!”

Above the second floor balcony, or where it had previously been, hung a vast, spinning black hole, edged in an odd, barely visible, purplish green light.  The middle swirled and made a sound similar to a whirlpool in a drain.  Misty, wispy figures spiraled through it, though rather than being sucked in, they seemed to be spat out of the vortex, deposited in the house.

“Do _not_ say you want to fight that thing, or fix it or whatever, Fearless.”

“Oh, shell no!  Let’s get the hell out of here!”

The two of them dashed to the door.  Leo grabbed the handle, which he twisted, then shook and rattled… It had opened so easily before…

“Not again…” Raph breathed, and Leo could hear the fear lacing it.

“Windows!” Leo shouted over the suction noise of the portal, though he shuddered at the thought of the girl he had encountered upstairs and her pane-ful fate.  Raph ran to the one on the left, Leo to the right, and both ended up shocked, though not totally surprised, when Raph’s sai deflected off the thin glass and Leo’s katana didn’t leave so much as a scratch on either the glass or wood.

Giving up on the window idea, the leader passed his light over their immediate surroundings.  “Didn’t Mikey say something about the Ouija board?”

“Uh, yeah.  He said don’t mess with it.”

“And just in case, always say ‘Goodbye’!”  He directed his light over the letters scorched into the floor, and stooped to roll the area rug out of the way.  Raph joined him, trying not to look at the ghostly portal, to cover twice as much ground.

“Where’s the ‘Goodbye’?!” he cried out when they’d run their flashlights over the whole thing.

“I don’t know!”  He glanced around frantically.  “Isn’t it usually at the bottom?”

The pair trained their lights beneath the array of letters, and over the large doormat.  On a closer look, they could see the curve of a G on one side, and the upper and lower feet of an E on the other.  Leo yanked it out of the way and they both jumped on the ‘Goodbye’.  The door latch popped open, and the door swung an inch before scooting to a hard stop against its now-tilted jamb.

“The tower must have knocked the whole house off its foundation…”

“So, whaddya think?  Is it Ninja Time?”

Leo just smirked.

 

From the outside, it looked like the door simply exploded into oaken splinters, fanning out in all directions, away from two giant turtle shells.  The shells grew legs and arms and heads as the two mutants’ feet hit the ground, bee-lining for the Shellraiser.

“Bros!” Mikey called, his arms wide to welcome them.  They charged right past him.

“What—” Donnie started as his elder brothers piled into the subway car.  “Are you guys all right?  When the cupola collapsed, we tried to come in after you, but it’s like the building wouldn’t let us in!”  The comm in his hand gave a burst of static, followed by a beep.  “Oh, _now_ you work…” he snarled at it, then looked up at the two turtles throwing themselves into their seats.  “Hey, where’s all the gear?!”

“Who cares?  Just GO!”

Leo gave a bare nod at his hot-tempered and thoroughly freaked out brother’s demand and stomped the gas pedal, throwing Don and Mike into their chairs.  Burning rubber off the tires as he peeled out, they hurtled back toward the Lair at easily twice the speed limit.

Mikey, though still sulking about not being greeted by his brothers, suddenly sat up in realization.  “Don!  What time is it?”

The purple-banded turtle glanced up at the Shellraiser’s instruments.  “It’s…”  He sighed.  “3:05.”

“Aw, man!” Mikey groaned, throwing himself back in his seat and crossing his arms.  “You guys won the bet.”

Raph turned to pin him with a look, and Mikey cowered with a slight “Eep!”  Raph’s eye twitched a bit, then a crazed smile took his features and he started weakly giggling in hysteria.  “The _bet!_   Isn’t that great, Leo?  We won _the bet!_ ”

Leo seemed to catch some of Raph’s contagion and started laughing in the same weird way.  “Yeah… great!  Oh, god…”

Mikey cast a confused glance at his older brothers, then looked to Don, jerking a thumb toward the two.  The genius merely shook his head.

 

“So you really saw some ghosts?”

“Yeah, Mike… Lots of ghosts.”

“What were they like?  Were they scary?” Mikey prodded.

“I don’t wanna talk about it!  Leave me alone!” Raphael exploded at him.

Mikey backed off a bit, but persisted.  “What happened to you guys?  You look awful…”

“A lot, Mikey… We’ll talk about it later, but give us some time, would you, please?”

The youngest walked off in a cloud of disappointment as Leo continued his conversation with—or rather berating from—Don.  “Seriously, you didn’t bring back any of it?!” he huffed, then reached for Leo’s Go-pro helmet.  “At least there’s still these.”

Leo blinked.  “Honestly, I forgot I even had it on…”

“I’ll have to look over the footage and see what you caught.”

Honestly, at this point, Leo never wanted to see any of it again, but Don was welcome to the trauma of watching it himself.  “Get some sleep first, Don.  It’s been a long night.”

“Sure, Leo. 

The leader declared the day off so they could all get some decent sleep, though both he and Raph were so amped up after their experiences, they both found their way to the couch.  Meditating and weight training, at this point, would do them no good to still their racing hearts, so they ended up marathonning nice, calming rom-coms the whole day, utterly unaware of their brothers’ activity around them.

With nearly the full day spent, Leo finally retired to his room, skipping his usual meditation, because quite frankly, he didn’t _want_ to reflect on what had happened, just sink into a warm, peaceful sleep for a while.  As he was preparing to bed down though, there came a quiet knock at his door, and Raph stepped in, looking uncharacteristically meek.

“Um… this may sound dumb, Fearless, but… could I sleep with you tonight?”

Without a word, Leo lifted the blankets, and his younger brother immediately dashed in, snuggling close against him.

“Don’t tell the guys about this,” the hothead commanded.

“Okay,” he agreed, blowing out the bedside candles.  Raph stopped him.

“Couldja leave one burning?”

“Okay,” he said again, voice full of comfort.

Just as he was about to drift off, another soft knock sounded, and at his call to come in, Don stepped in, dragging a stiff, shuddering Michelangelo clinging to his right side.

“Leo, could we sleep with you tonight?”

He sighed.  “I’m gonna need a bigger bed… What’s wrong, Donnie?” 

At those words, Raph also sat up in concern.  “What’s up with Mikey?”

“He’s been watching your footage.  It’s got him a little spooked.”

“Ghosts… so many ghosts… Ghosts everywhere, and you couldn’t see them!” the little turtle mumbled, sounding on the verge of tears.

“You look a little wigged too.  Maybe you shouldn’t have been watching that before bed…”

“I didn’t,” he stated.  “I’m not even sure I want to at this point.  I went back to the Carleton mansion today to see if I could recover any of your gear…”

“What?!  Don, you didn’t go in—”

“…and it’s gone.”

Raph’s brow furrowed.  “What, somebody went in there and stole the stuff we left?”

“No, I mean the _mansion_.  It’s gone.  Even the lot it was on… the buildings on either side are almost flush against each other… like it was never even there.” 

 They all just stood motionless for a time, letting the ramifications sink in.

“We could’ve—” Raph started, but Leo shushed him. 

“You guys move my mattress to the floor, and maybe try to pry Mikey off Don; I’ll go get Donnie’s mattress and bedding.”

Moments later, they were all snuggled together in a warm pile, clinging to one another until the shivers stopped and the candle burnt out.


End file.
